37 State Attorneys General Urge Instagram to Protect User Location Privacy

A bipartisan coalition of 37 state attorneys general, including North Carolina's Jeff Jackson and Oklahoma's Gentner Drummond, has urged Instagram to make immediate changes to its new location-sharing feature due to serious safety and privacy concerns. The feature displays users' precise, real-time locations on a map for 24 hours when they post, which poses risks especially for children and survivors of domestic violence by potentially exposing them to predators and abusers. The attorneys general have called on Instagram to ensure minors cannot enable this feature, to send clear alerts to adult users about the risks and usage of location data, and to provide easy controls for users to disable location sharing at any time. They emphasized that these commonsense measures could mitigate dangers without compromising user privacy or product functionality. The coalition underscored that user safety must take precedence over product novelty and that Instagram should respond promptly to these concerns. Despite the option to turn off location sharing, Instagram may still collect location data for advertising purposes, highlighting ongoing privacy issues.